Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (12 page)

Hoist by His Own Petard

Ultimately, Osborn—the proverbial Alcibiades and Sophist—is defeated by his own avarice when he is betrayed by the very institutions he created (such as the Dark Avengers and the evil Cabal) to secure power. His lack of self-control and destructive addiction to power mirror the Sentry’s, and it is fitting that he is publicly revealed to be under the influence of the Green Goblin after the Void is revealed to be in control of the Sentry.

Osborn could have become a hero if he had reined in his passions and committed himself to a genuine integration and development of his character. Sadly, he had few honest peers like Victoria Hand in his regime, and his opportunities for critical self-reflection were few and far between. When incarcerated after the Siege, he reveals some rationale for carrying out his duty in the manner in which he did, but it is a distorted rationalization driven by an exaggerated appreciation of the dangers in the Marvel Universe.
¹⁵
Osborn’s Achilles’ heel is his insecurity, which led him to react rashly to diverse and independent sources of power. Instead of integrating and understanding potential and powerful sources of power, he attempted to undercut, possess, and subvert them. Ultimately his ambitions and insecurities eclipsed all of his heroic potential. He had the great power, but he never embraced the great responsibility that came with it—especially to himself.

NOTES

1.
Thunderbolts
#125 (December 2008), reprinted in
Thunderbolts Vol. 3: Secret Invasion
(2009), and
Secret Invasion
#8 (January 2009), reprinted in
Secret Invasion
(2009). For more on Osborn’s manipulation of the public trust in the Avengers, see the chapter titled “Shining the Light on the Dark Avengers” by Sarah Donovan and Nick Richardson in this volume.

2.
Dark Avengers
#1 (March 2009); the entire series was collected in the hardcover
Dark Avengers
(2011).

3.
Alcibiades
, in Plato,
Complete Works
, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 132e–135e. Standard pagination is given whenever Plato is quoted, so you can find the relevant passages in any reputable translation.

4.
Dark Reign: The List—X-Men
(November 2009), reprinted in
Dark Reign: The List
(2010).

5.
Sentry
#1–5 (2000–2001), reprinted in
The Sentry
(2005).

6.
Dark Avengers
#13 (March 2010).

7.
Dark Avengers
#6 (August 2009).

8.
Ibid.

9.
Siege: Loki
#1 (June 2010), reprinted in
Siege: Battlefield
(2010).

10.
Siege
#1 (March 2010), reprinted in
Siege
(2010).

11.
Dark Avengers
#13.

12.
Dark Avengers
#14 (April 2010).

13.
Siege
#2 (April 2010), reprinted in
Siege
.

14.
Siege: Secret Warriors
#1 (June 2010), reprinted in
Siege: Battlefield
.

15.
Dark Avengers
#16 (July 2010) and
Osborn
#1–5 (January–June 2011, reprinted in
Osborn: Evil Incarcerated
, 2011).

PART THREE

SHOULD THE AVENGERS DO MORE THAN AVENGE?

Chapter 7

FORGIVERS ASSEMBLE!

Daniel P. Malloy

The very first comic book I ever bought was an issue of
West Coast Avengers
, a long-running spinoff of the main
Avengers
book. I don’t remember what it was about or which issue it was. I only remember three things: it cost me 75 cents (!), it ended in a cliffhanger of some kind—and it had a really cool cover, which is why I bought it. The cover featured this great drawing of some guy dressed in purple and sporting a bow and arrow. I didn’t realize it then, or even after I’d read the book (many many times), but that guy on the cover was a villain. Not in that comic, of course, by which time he was a well-established hero, but much earlier in his purple-clad career. Years later I found out that the character whose design and weaponry had gotten me interested in comic books—Clint Barton, the hero named Hawkeye—had actually started his life as a villain.

Hawkeye isn’t the only former villain among the Avengers’ ranks. Several other high-profile team members over the years—the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, Wonder Man, and the Black Widow, to name a few—began life on the wrong side of the law. Certainly other superhero teams have recruited from the ranks of their enemies, but not quite as often or as prominently as the Avengers have. This remarkable fact gives us a chance to explore two of the most fascinating yet troublesome topics in moral philosophy—forgiveness and redemption—issues that must be dealt with together. Without forgiveness there can be no redemption, and forgiveness that does not grant redemption is hollow.

Time Travel, Retcons, and Forgiveness

In the universe of comic books, unlike the real world, it’s possible to change the past. Sometimes heroes or villains go back in time to change or preserve the course of history—that’s Kang the Conqueror’s modus operandi. More often, writers decide that something happened in the past that they failed to mention or that their characters didn’t know about, so they fill in the gaps, not changing history as much as completing it (after the fact). In the most extreme cases, the writers judge that the history of their characters doesn’t work anymore, for some reason, so they just make up a new one. Fans—often in a critical tone—call this process a
retcon
, short for retroactive continuity, changing past stories to make them consistent with present ones. This fantastic ability possessed by comics creators is one of the reasons very few heroes and villains in comics ever stay dead—if writers can’t find a way to bring them back to life in current stories, they change earlier ones so they didn’t actually die.

Unfortunately, we in the real world are pretty much stuck with the past as it is. Oh, we can deny it or lie about it, but we can’t actually change past events—what has happened has happened, and that’s the way it always will be. This is what philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) called the “predicament of irreversibility.”
¹
Once an event has occurred or an action has been taken, there is no going back. This predicament affects us most personally when the thing we would like to reverse is some action of our own or one that has affected us. Who wouldn’t want to go back and retract those hurtful words or get in that one great comeback that you only thought of after you’d left the party? Who wouldn’t want to avoid getting mugged or being betrayed? We can’t do it, though. The best we can do is manage how we feel about that event.

Because we’re talking about forgiveness, let’s focus on a case where one person has harmed another—or, at least, where one person feels they’ve been harmed by another. Consider Simon Williams, the Avenger known as Wonder Man and originally, like Hawkeye, a villain. With the help of the villain Baron Zemo, Simon was exposed to “ionic energy” and acquired superpowers in an attempt to exact revenge upon Tony Stark (otherwise known as Iron Man). Stark Industries was in direct competition with Williams Innovations, which Simon’s family owned. Stark did not compete with Williams unfairly—he simply offered better products or cheaper prices or some combination thereof. Nevertheless, Williams believed he had been wronged by Stark, and became Wonder Man to seek revenge.
²

There are several ways we can deal with being wronged, but they all start from a basic, perhaps even instinctual reaction: resentment. Resentment is not a bad thing in itself. In fact, it is arguably an important part of self-preservation—at least according to philosopher and theologian Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752). In Butler’s sermons on resentment and forgiveness, he argues that resentment should not be looked on as a moral failing. It is simply a necessary reaction to being harmed or wronged, and teaches us to avoid similar situations in the future.
³
It can, however, become a moral failing if we allow excessive resentment to control our actions, as is the case with Wonder Man. Excessive resentment leads to revenge—and the antidote to it is forgiveness.

Butler’s arguments for the link between forgiveness and resentment have been taken as gospel (pun intended—please forgive me) by most contemporary philosophers who think about forgiveness, although they also typically argue that Butler’s definition is correct but incomplete. For instance, excuses pose a particular problem for Butler’s account. By excuses I don’t mean the classics like “the dog ate my homework” or “I have a headache.” In this context, an excuse is a reason for having acted or failed to act that mitigates or eliminates moral (or legal) responsibility.
⁴
For instance, since the Vision was an artificial “synthezoid” created and programmed by Ultron to destroy the Avengers, he was arguably not responsible for those actions, so he has an excuse in our sense.
⁵
The problem with excuses as far as Butler’s account of forgiveness is concerned is that they too suppress or reduce resentment, but in a completely different way. We have to add to Butler’s account that forgiveness does not deny the wrongdoer’s responsibility for his or her actions.

At the same time, forgiveness, like excuses, maintains an aura of disapproval. When I forgive someone, I must maintain that the action for which I am forgiving them was wrong to begin with. It is not made right by my forgiveness—forgiveness does not condone an action. This may seem a fairly obvious point, but that does not prevent people from getting confused about it. For instance, take the case of the second modern Black Knight, Dane Whitman. Attempting to prove his worth to the Avengers and atone for the misdeeds of his uncle (his villainous predecessor as the Black Knight), Dane infiltrates and then betrays the second incarnation of the Masters of Evil.
⁶
Now, in all likelihood, Dane had to do some pretty unsavory things to join the group—they are the Masters
of Evil
, after all. At the very least, we know that Dane had to lie to his fellow Masters of Evil. These deeds, however, do not need to be forgiven. We would condone them; whatever evil Dane did was ultimately in the interest of preventing even greater evil by the Masters of . . . well, you know.

Can Cap Forgive the Rest of His Kooky Quartet?

So, forgiveness is the act of giving up resentment against a wrongdoer without denying his responsibility for doing wrong (as excusing him would) or the wrongness of the wrong (as condoning it would). There are (at least) two reasons for offering forgiveness. First, forgiveness benefits the one who forgives, because to hold on to resentment is to allow the wrongdoer more power over oneself than he deserves. Second, by forgiving wrongdoers, we make reconciliation between ourselves and them possible. Offering forgiveness is a step toward reestablishing a relationship between the wrongdoer and the person wronged. This is why answering the question in the title of this section—“Can Cap forgive the rest of his Kooky Quartet?”—is tricky but essential to understanding the infamous second lineup of the Avengers, as well as forgiveness itself.

In issue #16 of
Avengers
(vol. 1, May 1965), the founding members of the team decide that they need to take a break. They are not disbanding the team or leaving the team altogether—they simply need some time off (after a grueling first fifteen issues). So they look for replacements, and they find them rather quickly in the form of three reformed
supervillains
: Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. Previously, Hawkeye had been a minor foe of Iron Man (under the sway of the Black Widow, no less, also a villain at the time), and Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch had been members of (their father) Magneto’s original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (note the word “evil”). Together with honorary founding member Captain America (whom the “real” founding members thawed out from a block of ice in the fourth issue of the series), these baddies-turned-goodies became the new Avengers lineup.

The problem with Cap’s Kooky Quartet, as this incarnation of the Avengers came to be known, is that they somehow became heroes “overnight.” In hindsight, several decades and hundreds of stories later, there’s no doubt that they were sincere, although Quicksilver is still an arrogant, hotheaded jerk, Hawkeye—well, he’s an arrogant, hotheaded jerk too—and the Scarlet Witch, well, she has her own issues that we’ll talk about later. (In contrast, Cap just died a few times, but he’s better now.) Nonetheless, we should still be concerned about the fact that these three have performed evil deeds. A villain can’t simply say, “Oh, uh, look, I’ve thought it over, and well, I’m a good guy now.” Evil deeds don’t disappear when one has a change of heart, nor do they vanish when just anybody says it’s okay. In this case, it’s appropriate that it was Iron Man who introduced the new Avengers lineup, because Hawkeye’s entire criminal career basically consisted of trying to defeat him. So Iron Man has what contemporary philosopher Claudia Card calls the “moral power” to forgive Hawkeye: as a victim of Hawkeye’s crimes, Shellhead has the authority to grant absolution and forgiveness.
⁷

Who Will Forgive the Mutants?

But Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch—mutant siblings Pietro and Wanda Maximoff—pose more of a problem. To be sure, there are mitigating factors in their case: for example, they only joined the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to repay a debt to Magneto for saving Wanda’s life from an anti-mutant mob.
⁸
To show their gratitude, Wanda and Pietro swore their allegiance to Magneto’s pro-mutant cause, and went on to become supervillains. When they decided their debt had been paid they left Magneto’s service, and later (naturally) they turned up on the Avengers’ doorstep, ready to serve. They did, however, commit crimes while with Magneto, albeit reluctantly, and they were never punished. So we have to assume that their crimes were forgiven or excused. By whom, though? The only people with any obvious power to forgive or excuse are the victims, and we never see or hear anything from them. Without that, there is no way to say that forgiveness has been granted.

There are unusual cases, however, where forgiveness can be granted without the victim’s assent. For instance, suppose Pietro and Wanda had, in the course of their careers as supervillains, accidentally caused the death of a security guard named Stanley. Obviously, in the case of death, the victim can’t forgive or excuse what happened. If Stanley is not available to forgive Pietro and Wanda, who can? Perhaps nobody, in which case theirs will be an evil deed that is forever on their heads. But maybe the security guard had a wife. This, of course, makes their crime worse, but there is a bright side. Stanley’s wife is a victim of the Maximoffs’ crime also, and as such, she has the right to speak not only on her own behalf, but on her husband’s as well. She can, if she chooses, grant Pietro and Wanda forgiveness.

That’s a fairly uncomplicated case of what we call
third-party forgiveness
. Things become much more complicated when the third party is not a direct or indirect victim of the crime, as when the Avengers grant Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch a sort of absolution by allowing them to join the team. To see why this is a problem, think back to Bishop Butler’s analysis, in which forgiveness is forgoing revenge and overcoming resentment. A third party who isn’t injured by the evil deed has no reason to feel resentment and no motive for revenge. Therefore, it would seem that there can be no such thing as third-party forgiveness, and the Avengers, even Cap, cannot absolve Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch of their crimes.

That understanding of forgiveness, however, takes a rather narrow view of what it is to be injured by a crime. A crime is a violation of a law, and our duty to obey laws, moral or otherwise, does not depend solely on our relationship to any random person we may harm by not obeying them. This duty is owed to the community more generally—that is why we can be punished for crimes that have no specific victim. When I jaywalk, for instance, I am not harming anyone—I’m just crossing the street in an illegal way. In fact, the only person likely to suffer any bodily harm from my habit of ignoring crosswalks is me (if it weren’t for my Herculean frame, that is). Nonetheless, by ignoring the laws about when and where I may cross streets, I am causing harm to the community as a whole: I am disrupting the orderly flow of traffic and the overall harmony of the community. Admittedly, others are probably disrupting it more: arsonists, kidnappers, and mimes, as well as supervillains (and mimes), all come to mind as excellent examples of disruptive influences in a community. But my jaywalking is also disruptive—just not to the same degree (especially compared to mimes).